BULLYING APRIL FOOL

ONE

BULLYING APRIL FOOL

         I smell menace in the air as I walk outside the school building.  I keep my strides brisk and determined, walking with my shoulders back and chest out, exuding confidence.  The sound of children’s feet rushing home suddenly comes to a halt and I sense the familiar happening around me.  They scatter around and watch while a band of four bullies now block my way, daring me to penetrate their juvenile wall.  I clutch my books against my chest with crossed arms. Toto, the leader, a fifteen-year old diminutive punk who thinks and acts like he’s ten times his height, steps cockily forward and thrusts his index finger at my arm. . .once, twice. I do not budge. I glare at him, pretending to be braver than I really am. I keep my composure, even though my knees feel like overcooked spaghetti.

          “Whaz up, April Fool? What ya hiding behind those books?” Toto jeers, eyes disappearing into two narrow slits, like pencil-drawn lines.  I smell rotten sardines in his breath. Rumors are that they eat canned sardines all the time since his mother gambled their life savings away. But no one dares talk about that, lest they suffer the consequences.

         I tighten my grip on my books.  The gang has a new motive for harassing me.  It’s no longer to just taunt and provoke me with insulting gibes as the town’s bastard child, child of sin, April Fool, or any other derogatory names they could coin.  Now they tease and mock me for having developed early.  I’ve tried to conceal them with loose sweaters even on hot days, but they’re still noticeable.  Wearing layers of clothing in hot and humid Philippines means I’m twice as hot and uncomfortable most times. 

          “Get out of my way, you punk.”

         I hear scornful laughter from the villainous four. 

          “Punk?”  I’d rather be a punk than a bastard child, a whore’s daughter.”  Toto’s smirk makes me think of Satan with a lizard face. 

         Being called a whore’s daughter is the hardest thing for me to take.  My mother is not a whore.  She is a good and virtuous woman.  Yes, I am the product of my mother’s one-night stand, as they call it. I don’t know who my father is. I’m not sure my mother knows either.  She has apologized to me many times for her lapse in judgment that night I was conceived …one lousy drink at a party, her first ever, did not metabolize in her system and she got drunk right away.

         I take a deep breath and plan an escape.  But how?  I am surrounded.  This is really different this time.  They look twice as menacing.  This is not going to be the usual name-calling, ponytail-pulling, arm-poking harassment.  I notice how the other children have stayed back and out of the way to avoid them.  They usually participate in the vicious entertainment at my expense.  Yes, I can sense it in their eyes, there’s trouble brewing beyond the usual.  It’s something more serious, and it has something to do with my physical development in the chest area.  As if it hasn’t been bad enough to be born in sin, I have matured physically, much earlier than most girls.  I’ve been cursed to develop breasts that do not look proportioned to my body. I bind my chest to flatten my breasts, but even that is not enough to hide them.

         No one is going to come to my rescue.  A teacher always comes too late; by that time, the bullies will have skittered away laughing, and no one will snitch; everyone’s afraid of what would happen if they did.  Toto’s father is a professional boxer and the barrio’s ruling captain of this community of a few hundred families.  He talks and acts as though he were the provincial governor.  People fear retaliation from him at the slightest provocation to his son: their garbage won’t be picked up, and their water and electricity will be turned off.  No, to avoid the consequence of fighting Toto, it’s best to ignore him, or let him do what he wants.  With me, after all, being constantly taunted the whore’s daughter by him is no different from what anyone else calls me or thinks of me.  After years of being called these derisive names, I’ve trained myself to be stoic and ignore it all.

          “Why don’t you show us what you’re hiding behind those books?” Toto demands as he and his boys begin to surround me in a semicircle.  I hug my books even more tightly to my chest.  Toto pokes at the books and my arms with more force this time, determined to send my books flying off my arms and exposing what is hidden behind them.

         I look around in search of a sympathetic face to come to my rescue.  No one comes forth.  It’s all up to me, as always, even though Mom and Grandma have spoken to the teachers and principal several times about it.  I feel my eyes moistening, but I manage to stop the tears. “Never show your weakness,” Grandma always says. “It will only empower the enemy.”

          “Show your oranges,” Toto orders aggressively, his hand reaching for my sweater.  I slap his hand away, loosening my grip on the books, allowing him to push and knock them down.  His cronies cheer.

         I freeze in horror.  I stand there, feeling naked and exposed. The moment I have feared is now becoming a reality.  Someone is going to touch my breasts!  I try to make an escape and run as fast as I can, but I cannot summon my feet to move.

         I am about to be groped by a skinny, disgusting dwarf, and my mind goes blank.  I sink deeper into a murky quagmire.  I am wetting my panties now.  Soon they will see my urine streaming down my legs and there’s not a thing I can do about it.  I am humiliated beyond belief.  Everything is blurred.  I hear the snickering noise from Toto’s sidekicks as his hand comes closer to my chest as if in slow motion.  I see only him, only his hand. I close my eyes to prevent seeing the hand of the satanic dwarf press against my breasts and forever be called puta--like mother, like daughter.  My cheeks are wet from tears and sweat.  I’m all wet.  I seem to be drowning in a lake.  I wish I were. 

         Just then, I hear someone yell, “Keep your hands off her!”

         I open my eyes and I see Jimbo--the only kid in the barrio who never even once mocked me, because he, too, was born out of wedlock, but he’s been spared of ridicules because his mother had died shortly after giving birth to him.  He’s not much taller than Toto; in fact, he’s featherweight and looks as if Toto could simply flick a finger at him and he’d be airborne.

         I feel awakened from a dream.  I see Toto’s face only an inch apart from Jimbo’s face, each painted with animosity, but only Toto’s eyes are filled with violence, ready to beat his enemy into a pulp.  I can see through the fear in Jimbo’s eyes that could just run and race the wind like a scared bunny.  Poor, pathetic fool.  What made him think he could defeat the beast?

          “You pick on a girl instead of picking on a boy,” says Jimbo to Toto’s face.  He doesn’t sound convincingly brave.  “Oh, I see, it’s because you’re only a midget, like me.”

         Midget--the M word that no one dares to call Toto lest he runs to papa.  Who would want their home smelling like a garbage dump and their electricity and water supply cut off?

         I see the forked tongue of the tiny dragon shoot fire at Jimbo, sending him to fall backward, landing on his bottom in a pool of mud.

         The huge laughter from Toto’s sidekicks awakens all my senses.  As I watch Jimbo’s dark brown face turn red from humiliation, I suddenly feel courage surge through me.  I am taller and bigger than the midget.  Why shouldn’t I put to use the heavy weight that God had cursed me with and let Toto discover the power of my early womanhood?.  Possessed suddenly with hate, my mind is filled with ugly things I could inflict on the bad hobbit.  I imagine disintegrating him into tiny particles and reducing him to dirt for all he has bullied to walk all over him. 

         A primitive roar rises from my gut, sending an electrical charge shoot through me.  Like a leaping dragon, I charge forward and jump Toto from behind, tackling him like on that TV show Grandma loves to watch. We catapult through the air and fall onto the ground in tandem.  My chest on his back, my arms around his neck, I am a raging force; releasing all the anguish of years of heartbreak and humiliation.

         I feel a sense of freedom from years of captivity--imprisoned for a single moment in time when fate brought a man and a woman together and created me in a Garden of Eden while the devil cheered on.

         A flash of lucidity returns when I hear Toto wail like a girl, screaming for his father.

         I will be suspended for a week, our water and electricity will be cut off, and maybe our garbage won’t be picked up for a while, but having anticipated it, we will be ready for it.  We will eat baked cold beans from a can everyday, or cook from a wood stove.  There’s no television for a week, which will only help me focus on my studies  so that when I return to school, I would be far ahead of my classmates.

         Weeks pass—

         For the first time since I can remember, I feel good about myself.  Something fundamental has changed in my life.  I no longer feel the outcast, but a heroine in a novel as the story of my bravery is circulated and spread through the barrio and stitched to such flattering embellishment that the humiliated Toto has ceased to be a bully.  Meanwhile, Jimbo has become my closest and only ally.

         I bask in glory everyday, enjoying the look of admiration from those around me.

         But it doesn’t last.

         Fact is fact.  I am still the same girl born out of sin, no father to call my own, my mother is still the barrio’s puta.  I’m still the little girl with the big chest.  Soon, everything returns to normal.  I return to being "April Fool" -- the favorite victim of the school bullies.

          “April fool.  April fool,” shout the cruel children.  I try to ignore them and feign bravery.  But sometimes it becomes unbearable. I run home in tears, passing Mom and Grandma in the kitchen; I say nothing.  They say nothing. They understand.  I go straight into my room and throw myself onto the bed, fold myself up into a fetal position, and sob.  I think of my unknown father.  I want to hate him, but I cannot. I love him even though he doesn't know I exist. I've never had a father figure in my life.  Grandpa died before I was born. In a way, I envy Toto because he has a father who loves him and protects him.  I wish my father would materialize into my life and affectionately soothe my pains.

         Grandma and Mom wait a while before they come into my room bearing a cup of warm cocoa and a small plate of my favorite peanut butter cookies.. They take turns in hugging me. And only then do I feel loved, and nothing else seems to matter anymore. . . for a while, at least.
 
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ID: 1586565   (Rated: 13+) Mama, Papa: Why Have You Abandoned Me?  Joy is having my fairy tale come true and uniting with the father I never knew. But. . . by APRIL SHOWER